It occurred to me today that, sometimes, you just need some more time.

I got an email from a coworker earlier today, asking me to look into a problem with a device that wasn’t connecting to wifi the way that it should. I saw the email, and I thought to myself, “I’ll handle that in a few minutes.”

By the time I got back to my inbox to look into the details of the issue, there was a new email in the thread, saying, “Never mind, we figured it out.”

My favorite kind of problem is the problem that solves itself and my favorite coworker is the coworker that perseveres a little bit to try to find their own answers. As the sole technician for my school district, I have had many, many occasions to discover the joy of the problem that solves itself. With just a little bit of time, a percentage of stuff in my inbox solves itself, sometimes because people continue to work toward their own solution and sometimes because the issue goes away on its own.

Which got me to thinking about the bigger picture (as I so often do).

How many problems have we faced that, through the simple passage of time, become easier to solve or, maybe even, solve themselves?

Of course, this can be a dangerous approach to take with things. My final words to my brother, who died of a freak accident at the age of 31, were words of anger that I thought I would have time to repair. Turns out, I never got that time. But, there have been other examples of interpersonal problems that I’ve been involved in that, regardless of how you tweaked or fiddled with them, weren’t going to be fixed without the passage of some time.

I am a Sudoku fanatic and have been for several years now. I do at least one puzzle everyday (and on most days I do even more than that). Sometimes, when it comes to the hardest puzzles, the best thing I can do is walk away. I will wrestle with a puzzle until I’m blue in the face, but, to walk away for a time, and then to come back and re-engage, I can see things from a whole different perspective.

And, when this happens, I usually smack myself in the forehead and think to myself, “Why didn’t I see that before?”

It’s a loss of perspective that results from me sitting there, frustrated, staring at that puzzle, thinking to myself, “I should be able to solve this!” and “I am probably just a moment or two away from a breakthrough!” and “Why can’t I get this?”, and that’s when I know that I’m too close. I’ve lost my perspective.

Just walk away.

Allow for the passage of time.

We aren’t trained to do this in a society that is perpetually in a hurry. Stopping and giving yourself time is a dying art. But what a difference it can make. Deadlines and pressure to perform and massive workloads make us think that taking time to stop on a problem when we’re stumped is going to get us in trouble or is a waste of time. But, it’s not any more of a waste of time than it would be to sit at a problem, starting it in the face, perspective lost, going nowhere.

At least, if you get up and walk away, you could go and do something else.

And, I promise you that this has happened to me a thousand times –> after I’ve walked away from something, it will occur to me what I should try that I hadn’t tried before.

Additionally, but along these same lines, I’ve found on multiple occasions in life, the best thing to do when you don’t know what to do is to wait for things to become clearer. As time goes by, often, more of the picture gets revealed to the point where it’s easier to make decisions that are level-headed and intelligent.

For example, I used to play trivia games in bars and restaurants where the point of the game was to be able to answer the question as quickly as possible, for max points. But, if you didn’t know the answer, the clock would tick away and wrong answers would get removed, so that you could eventually answer correctly –for fewer points, of course– even if you didn’t know what the correct answer was in the first place.

Or, if you’ve ever seen these puzzles before –> a super-zoomed-in picture of something that you can’t possibly recognize pans out until you are, at a certain point, able to recognize what you’re looking at. Sure, you could guess early on at what the picture might be, or you could just for things to become more clear.

When it comes down to it, the passage of time is good for a lot of things.

When my children microwave french fries to have them done in thirty seconds but they end up tasting like rubber, but I get out the deep fryer and preheat the oil and cook the fries and they taste phenomenal.

Or the student who reads the email in twelve seconds but got none of the information vs. the methodical and steady student who takes their time and does things right the first time. When Speedy Gonzales has to go back and reread the email a second time, they end up having accomplished the task no faster for having to do it twice than the student who did it slow and properly the first time.

Or, if you ever seen the movie “Cars” (a Disney Pixar classic), the story of Radiator Springs, and the story of Route 66 in real life, is the story of America’s desire to get things done as quickly as possible and how that obsession affected the cities and towns that were eventually bypassed by the resulting freeways. The most wonderful part of that movie is the feel that Radiator Springs has, with its slower, more enjoyable pace of life.

Time is valuable, no doubt. And wasting time is to be avoided, most certainly. But, taking a little bit longer to do things well, or allowing for some time to pass so that you can regain perspective or so that things around you can become more clear, isn’t a waste at all.